ScottTykoski

FE - Animation Mondays #2 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

First off, sorry this was a day late...we had a 4 day Easter weekend that cut into my weekly journal. It won’t happen again (until our next Monday off) ;) Todays animation is the ‘Cast Ranged Spell w/ Staff’ motion. In FE, we’ve added the ability to make weapon-specific spell casting animations (a wizard with a staff with cast differently then a warlord with a sword, etc.) as well as made tweaks to what animations are played for what spells (adding a targ

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Its coming ;) Damn awesome 4 day weekend getting in the way of work :(

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="25" id="2926431"]Boogie, I was saying this in another thread, but you guys should use mocap for the human animations. I'm sure it would make your lives far easier![/quote] You'd actually be suprised...while mocap is vital for long, cutscene quality animations (where actors can instill all the necessary subtlties) you end up spending so much time cleaning up unnecessary data that it'd be overkill for these quick 25-50 frame a

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="20" id="2926063"]Clunkily animated animals can have a surprisingly big effect on the experience...[/quote] Yeah, first thing we do when animating creatures is pull up a proper reference in YouTube (and if you've never seen a cheetah run, go do so now...it's amazing). Unfortunatly, alot of the choppyness you're probably seeing comes from the lack of 'animation blending', where a run will programatically merge into an idle, or idle to a

Reply to Come on, lets here some new Elemental News! WoM 1.2 and 1.3 info and/or Fallen Enchantress stuff. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="LightofAbraxas" reply="131" id="2925839"]Do you draw it all 'by hand'? How do you even come up with the sequences in the first place? Is acting it out in the office really the first step?[/quote] Yeah, we literally stand up, go throhg the motions, and sit back down at our desk to implement. Think of 3d animation being a lot like posing an actiona figure...I want the attacking soldier to (1) pull back his arm, shifting his weight onto his back foot (2) lunge f

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

Sorry - there are definiatly attachment points that effects can be linked to, but the only current way to attach in in XML, in the UnitType or ItemType. A spell that lit a weapon ablaze for a duration, visually, wouldn't currently be possible. I beleive it's a system that we'll need though, so I'll keep you posted as improvement are made.

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

Heavenfall: Right now effects are attached at the data level, right in the item or the unit, so (currently) we dont have a way to dynamically add them, but it's a system I'm sure we'll need, so I'll check with derek about 'dynamic adding of particles' being on the schedule. I would like to revisit the animation system at some point to make it more flexable/data-driven. Its a shame that you guys can't add 2-handed animations, or I would LOVE to get unique an

Reply to Come on, lets here some new Elemental News! WoM 1.2 and 1.3 info and/or Fallen Enchantress stuff. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I'll be doing those animation journals on Mondays :) As for design details, we have a marking outline that keeps getting pushed back as 1.2 keeps taking up time (time well spent, mind you, but time none the less).

Reply to FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

re Time it Takes: I'm finding that these animations are super variable, when it comes to how many can be done in a day. This one took around 2 hours. My best experience was on an Elemental Lord, where (because of its design) I was able to whip out 10 animations and still get home on time :) Worst experience was the human's 'Revive from Prone' animation, where, becaue of the footwork and acting involved, took me around 3 days to get right (could probably do it in 1.5 days, now that I;ve

Reply to Pirates at Lunch: Days 2 -> 8 in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

You can certainly make copies on your PC...glad you're digging them :) For now I'm going to focus on the game...if a comic or cartoon comes later, that'd be awesome too!

FE - Animation Mondays #1! in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Hey Everyone! I know information on Fallen Enchantress seems to trickle as of late. This is an unfortunate side-effect of adopting a 'large studio' pipline (rather than our previous indie-team system, where our excitement tended to go unchecked on the forums). Know that the game is on track and design decisions have been fueled by the feedback gathered post-WoM. Now, with the role of Producer in MUCH better hands, I was given the opportunity to pick up a new art form t

Reply to Pirates at Lunch: Days 2 -> 8 in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Thanks guys...and yeah, it's gonna be a kid-firendly game, so gotta keep the lady designs tasteful ;) Fallen Enchantress, however, will have boobs gallore [e digicons]:w00t:[/e] (jk)

Reply to Pirates at Lunch: Days 2 -> 8 in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

I will cherish that thumbs up :) Thanks Xia!

Reply to So FE has new creatures, hero traits, and new weapons... what else? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I believe we're going to finally be doing our second dev diary video next week....the v1.2 memory stuff waylayed some developers, but was necessary to strengthen the core engine.

Reply to Still Disappointed in War of Magic Elemental Forums

To address one of the the OP's questions: The expansion was set to fall to make it better. Besides a handful of folks, and the guys working on engine improvements (memory, stability), pretty much the whole team is toiling away at FE. One of the (many) things that went wrong with WoM was that there was no 'polish' phase. We were getting in key features right up 'till gold (and beyond), where-as with FE, Derek has set up a schedule where the main features and all assets

Reply to Fallen Enchantress Team in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="DrAtomic1" reply="6" id="2866470"]Do any of your artists have accounts with Deviantart or any other place where we can see some of their public work and keep track of them?[/quote] Finally got one of my own! http://boogiebac.deviantart.com/ Dunno why it took so long...there's some damn fine art out there. Great for inspiration :)</sp

Pirates at Lunch: Days 2 -> 8 in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

For the last 8 work-days I've been spending my lunch to make some pirate designs for a side-game I'm working on (using XNA, so I can make a PC and 360 version). Here are the creations from days 2 through 8. Enjoy! Pirates at Lunch Series:

Lunchtime Doodle Series - Pirates in Game Developers JoeUser Forums

Since I miss drawning, I thought it'd be fun to sharpen my skills with a lunchtime 'character design' series. Over the next two weeks I'll be shooting for 12-15 interesting pirate designs. On my first day I was able to get 2 made... The one on the left is the 'Sad Sac'. Formerly a captain of his own ship, he's since lost his

Reply to memory in War of Magic Elemental Forums

There's a 1.2 being beta-tested atm to weed out as many memory issues as possible. A new build just went live today if you want to try that (select "Show Pre-release Versions" in Impulse). Please note that you need to have a constant internet connection when using beta builds (wil not work offline). This reliance is taken out for the official builds. Hope the new version helps you get further into a game :)

Reply to Has Essence been abandoned as concept? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Design-wise, 'Mana upkeep' is basicially Essence (a limiting resource that can be spent or hoarded), with a considerably less sexy name :) The main problem is that the concept never saw its promised potential (In WoM, Hoarding Essence != badass). Luckilly, FE was designed with several new spells that should fill that void nicely.

Reply to Stardock, can you step up to the plate and accept the challenge? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I'd wait until next week to hear anything from Brad or Derek on the matter, since they're both in GDC at the moment. I know the team has a love/hate relationship with MP - we love to play it, would love to expand on it, but putting quality time into a feature that less than 1% of the players use is...frustrating (and we do have the numbers from other 4x TBS games to verify this number). From a day-to-day perspective, we're focusing on single player aspects of FE, and ob

Reply to Fallen Enchantress Video and Artwork in Elemental News Elemental Forums

TheProgress: Exact times?! Nice :) There's a bug where the last 5-8 frames of the attack animations randomly cut off, so that may be agrivating any 'rigidness' you're seeing with the snake, but I'll have Akil take another look at it. The 'abruptness' of those run-to-idle is the frame-blending tech we need to get in. Right now, one animation will cut directly into another, but with frame blending you'll get around 5 frames of overlap, so the transition wont look like crap

Reply to Fallen Enchantress Video and Artwork in Elemental News Elemental Forums

TheProgress: Which animations in that video did you find weak? There are some technical issue we need to overcome (combat units all idling in synch, no frame blending, etc) but the only two animations I have an issue with in the video are the plaguecat dying and Morian's hand clipping through the ground during his attack. That's not to say there are a LOT of animations that need redone or polished, but I am curious which ones fell flat on you in the vid.

Reply to Why should I buy this product now? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote]Then I read in the annual report that they plan to backport some of the FE changes into EWoM for people who don't like FE, and its like... WHY?[/quote] I don't know any details, but I believe these will be engine tweaks to improve memory usage, etc.

Reply to Come on, lets here some new Elemental News! WoM 1.2 and 1.3 info and/or Fallen Enchantress stuff. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

GW: He's more of a mini-boss type character than a 'lord' level creature, so I doubt he'll be wrapping himself around any castle walls :) GOnna talk with Derek about writing a journal about the stuff we're working on (creatures, in particular)...lots of cool things coming out of the bullpen nowadays.